Prove God is Real (in 100 Words)

What would you say? What is your elevator pitch?

I did a segment on Catholic Answers Live last week on faith and science, my usual topic. The last caller, Gabe, asked me two questions. The first one was, “Why should anybody pick the position that the Catholic Church has on abortion and enforce it upon legislation?” The second question with only a minute left in the segment was, “Yeah, I mean, do you have empirically, objectively verifiable, observable, repeatable, testimonial evidence that your God is real before we take your position on abortion?”

Before I tell you what I said, I want to pause here and tell you what went through my mind and has been stirring around ever since. (Of course, you can just scroll down too.) I was not stumped because I have had to answer this question a million times. But with only a minute to go, my quick thoughts were something like this: What do I say that will cover different approaches and leave the caller wanting to ask for more? I realized later this is what book publishers tell authors to do when proposing a book. Make an elevator speech!

An elevator speech is a one-minute, about a hundred-word, statement telling what your book is about. You imagine yourself stuck on an elevator with a stranger who asks about your book. You have one minute to spit it out and turn the stranger into a reader. It requires thought and focus. The elevator speech must honestly convey what the reader can expect to experience if he or she buys the book and invests time to read it. The blurb should also not be boring. It has to grab the interest of the potential reader. A lot of time can be spent editing the elevator speech. I mean, if you can’t make one worth repeating, then you don’t have a book. Go home and start over.

I was happy Gabe asked. For the record, he has every right, nay obligation, to do so. If Catholics are going to vote, petition, and defend capital T-Truth, then we should be asked to clearly state our position. That is what Catholic Answers “Apologists” do, and I am a fan of their work because they do it the best.

I was happy Gabe asked with only one minute to go, too. We need to have an elevator pitch ready in case someone, someday asks, like, in an elevator.

That made me think it would be fun to put the test out on social media, so I posted on X, Facebook, and here on Chat. The replies are good! You’ll need to click through.

There were some great answers. Here are a few:

From Richard Clinnick on Substack:

The five ways of Thomas Aquinas as written in the Summa Theologia in the original Latin. Definitely not as commonly translated into English. One may need to supplement the reading of St Thomas, however his five ways are sufficient. Lacking a high quality wide ranging Classical education, and even with one you may need to discuss and ponder the “ways” for a number of years. Stay at it though. You will be rewarded!

From the Hollywood Catholic on Substack:

In the spirit of what you're about (though it may not serve what you're about in the least; I'm no expert, not to mention deeply un-serious):

Again, considering composed substances, such a substance exists as a substance, not as the elements that composed it, because to exist is to exist as one thing, not as many things, meaning these elements no longer exist as the substance now exists. But things that exist do not of themselves un-exist, but rather because of some other cause. But this cause cannot be the substance which does not yet exist prior to the composition, but must be some other prior cause, a cause which must finally be prior to all composition, and this cause we know to be God. 

A sophistical brain-fart from a pop-culture clown! I'm in love with the endeavor, however. Thanks for the chance to play!

From Kaleb Hammond of Saint Tolkien on Substack:

Material things have being only accidentally, not essentially. Accidental beings cannot give themselves being, since they would preexist themselves, or else an infinite regress would occur, which is impossible. They must receive being from something whose being is essential, which everyone calls God. Material beings exist, therefore God exists.

From Teófilo de Jesús of My Life Review: A Catholic Man's Memoir on Substack":

You’re here. Ergo, God exists.

From Gordon Cotton on Facebook:

Childbirth!

From Bryan Gesinger on Facebook:

"There is an Is." --Frederick "Fritz" Wilhelmsen (RIP)

From Jacob Alles on Facebook:

If anything is true, it follows necessarily that God exists.

From Lynn Walters on Facebook:

Healing from Stage 4 cancer. When medical science could not do it, God intervened. I am living proof 12 years later. God revealed Jesus through the Holy Spirit, Who was at my side every moment, especially the darkest nights. What a love!

From Michael Martin on Facebook:

It’s a silly request. Prime mover works about as well as any proof. You need a life of suffering, grace, joy, redemption, good, failures, evil and even that is not good enough for a sceptic. You can’t even prove the self to a sceptic. Knowing God is a dialectic of movement and reflection and well chosen vocabulary and honesty and grace breaking into a life that recognizes it. Once known God is impossible to disprove. And it is not merely existential. It is reasonable.

From Cristina Montes on Facebook:

Order in the universe

From Anita Leger Kelley on Facebook:

Creation couldn't possibly have happened by accident.

From Derek M Hanrahan on Facebook:

The difference between surrendering to the highest good and any other good.

From Lee Cisneros on Facebook:

Human attraction to things that are Beautiful serves no evolutionary purpose. We are drawn to it because it reveals the truth of a Creator.

And from my favorite atheist philosopher, August Dyarchy, on Facebook:

I will take a stab at it:

How do we know that something is real? One way is if it corresponds to reality. How do we know if something corresponds to reality? We evaluate it as a theory and see how much of reality it explains. Theism, as a theory, should be preferred over other theories of reality because it is maximally simple and best explains the degree of motion, change, contingency, fine-tuning, consciousness, moral agents, religious experiences, and other such features of our world.

Jack Tierney on Facebook went for miracles and Aquinas:

Miracles... the Shroud of Turin, Our Lady of Guadalupe, Eucharistic Miracle of Lanciano, etc...

But also first cause.

John S. Martignoni made the most of his words:

Whatever created the universe is non-material, as matter cannot create matter out of nothing. It is outside of time - infinite - as time is a function of the material universe. It is powerful, as it created all matter and energy. It apparently has an ordered nature - which implies intellect - since the universe is ordered. It seems to have a will, as it willed something from nothing. So, something non-material, infinite, powerful, and ordered - which seems to have an intellect and a will - started the universe. God.

Eamonn Gaines from Facebook and Ireland gave a longer quote from Thomas A. F. Kelly:

What holds of something can do so either in virtue of what that thing is, or in virtue of what something else is. But a contingent thing's existence never holds of it simply in virtue of what it is, on pain of the thing's thereby being a self-actualising possibility, which is incoherent, or of its ceasing to be contingent and temporal. It follows that any contingent thing, always, for as long as it exists, derives its existence from another. This other must be sufficient to cause something other than itself to exist, and it cannot be so unless it actually exists itself. Something which is able to communicate existence need depend on nothing other than itself in order to exist. Something which both is and communicates existence, therefore exists of itself, and so cannot be produced by anything else. But something which exists of itself is therefore its own existence or is just existence, and so is incapable of any sort of complexity or plurality. Thus, since there are contingent things, there exists one and only one thing which is of itself, and is existence, the difference between contingent reality and sheer nothingness. This is what the word 'God' means.

Thomas A F Kelly, 'On Remembering and Forgetting Being', ACPQ 76 (2002) 321-340.

Gaven Kerr at St. Patrick’s Pontifical University offer his work:

Can I just submit that one paragraph from that one chapter of De Ente et Essentia?

And I can’t leave out bacon and Mexican food (duh).

On X, there was some debate.

Natural Theist - Tatian the Assyrian posted:

1. Necessary existence, by definition, cannot fail to exist. (Premise)

2. By definition, the Greatest Conceivable Being (GCB) cannot fail to exist. (Premise)

3. Therefore, the GCB must be necessary existence. (From 1 and 2)

4. God is, by definition, the GCB. (Premise)

5. Therefore, God must be necessary existence. (From 3 and 4)

6. From premise 1, necessary existence cannot fail to exist.

7. Therefore, God cannot fail to exist. (From 5 and 6)

Robocop on X said:

You could use far less words.

"I defined God to exist". As your Argument boils down to that.

I defined God as nonexistent. Check Mate

Thalassophile Phil4.8 posted on X:

First Cause Argument:

. Everything that moves or changes was moved or

changed by something else.

. This chain of causality can't go back infinitely; there

must be a first cause or "unmoved mover," which we

call God.

Design Argument:

. The complexity and order in nature (like the fine-

tuning of physical constants) suggest a purposeful

intelligent design.

. This points to a designer, identified as God.

Moral Argument:

. There exists an objective moral standard recognized

universally.

. This standard implies a moral lawgiver, traditionally

identified as God.

Conclusion:

. These arguments collectively suggest the existence of

a being who is:

- The origin of all existence.

- The designer of the universe.

- The source of moral law.

This being is traditionally understood as God.

Necessary Being on X posted:

i Existence enables particular things to exist

ii Existence couldn't enable particular things to exist, unless it itself exists

1. Thus, Existence exists

2 A Paradigm existent is a perfect instance of existence

3 Thus foundational reality is the perfection of Being Itself

UnApologetics on X posted:

The universe is made up of contingencies.

Contingencies are, by nature, dependent.

To avoid the absurdity of infinite regress, contingencies must arise out of a necessary being.

We call this necessary being God.

Thomas Matthew Chess on X posted:

The entire field of quantum physics is putting God’s work into a numerical form for analysis.

Will Albers on X posted:

Any attempt to "remove God from the equation" leads necessarily to utter chaos. Without God, we would never be able to have this conversation.

Also, I know Him (and He knows me).

Armocromia Operaia chimed in:

Prove he isn't.

Same number of words.

And so many more. You can read them all at the links above. Also, beer.

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What did you say though?

Here is my 3-minute clip from the show.

Here is the transcript:

[00:00] Cy Kellet: Gabe is in Texas. Gabe, welcome. Go ahead with your question for Doctor Stacy Trasancos.

[00:06] Gabe: Hi. I listen to Trent Horn before talking about abortion. Why should anybody pick the position that the Catholic Church has an abortion and enforce it upon legislation?

[00:20] Stacy Trasancos: Well, the Catholic Church doesn't just have positions on things for the sake of forcing it on people. Actually, that's against Catholic teaching to force these things on society. We're after the truth. The Catholic Church takes what was revealed by God in the life of Christ and tries to understand what it means for us. So why should anyone accept the Catholic position on abortion? Because it's the truth. It is the way to uphold human dignity for ourselves, for our families, in our relationships and our marriages, in our communities, in our nations. And so, if you're not leading the way with that absolute respect for all humans and their dignity, that's inherent, if you're not seeing every single human that way, then there's a problem. There are going to be problems that come from that. And I know it's hard, and I know Trent talks about this a lot too. It's difficult because you have children conceived who weren't expected, and it makes a lot of demands on how we deal with that. It would be lovely to see a culture that embraced the Catholic teaching on life completely, because then, only then, could we actually see how that works out, what it's like when human dignity is respected to that extent.

[01:42] Cy Kellet: Gabe, we have a minute. So, did you have a follow up, or is that answer acceptable to you?

[01:47] Gabe: Yeah, I mean, do you have empirically, objectively verifiable, observable, repeatable, testimonial evidence that your God is real before we take your position on abortion?

[01:57] Stacy Trasancos: Um, yeah, I mean, there, there, I can't answer that in 1 minute. But yes, it is more than just experience. It's more than just thinking there's some Flying Spaghetti Monster out there because I need to feel better. There's a lot of intellectual thought put in the Catholic Tradition to understand what we mean when we say “God” — what we can know about God through reason, what we know about God because of faith and divine revelation and putting it all together. One of the biggest teachings is that humans have free will, and so we have to make a decision about what we believe. And, you know, I put as one evidence forward the satisfaction and happiness I saw in other Catholics and that I found for myself. But that's just my personal experience. There are lots of arguments for the existence of God. As a chemist, I would say I don't know how you can look at atoms and how they form molecules and not believe there's a Creator.

Here is the YouTube video if you want to watch the whole episode: Faith and Science & The Church in the News | Catholic Answers Live | August 30, 2024

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And then what?

Gabe emailed me after the show. He did not think I answered the question properly, of course. Sigh. I know. I know.

But alas, he wants to hear more.

I have been ‘engaging atheists’ for about ten years, and one thing I have learned is that the opponent does not always want to engage at all. It doesn’t matter what you say, it will be rejected the instant the words leave your mouth.

But so what? Do it anyway. Not once has anyone ever dropped right there on the spot and decided to believe in God. Conversion is a lifelong process. I remember the moment I decided I believe, but it was a moment between God and me, not one in front of someone else. That first leap of faith was the result of a multifaceted series of experiences that included both my head and my heart. So, whatever your elevator pitch is, say something that will linger and leave the other person thinking. That’s my approach. Build trust.

Cy Kellet already told Gabe that Catholic Answers would send him some information. I will send him the answers from the people on X, Facebook, and Substack. As for “proof” that God is real? That is a big topic for another time as is the topic of abortion and society. For now, got an elevator pitch yet? It’s a useful exercise.